September 2025 · David McCloskey
School, career, and the data that connects them
Linked Census data reveals how school sector shapes career outcomes — and what selective-entry schools suggest about closing the gap.
At first glance, the question sounds straightforward: does the school you attend change the career you end up in? But answering it properly — with linked data rather than assumption — has been nearly impossible. Until now.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics' Longitudinal Census database links individual Census returns across years, making it possible to trace real people from their 2011 school years into their 2021 working lives. In a new TAPRI research report, we used that linked data to ask three precise questions: does school sector (government, Catholic, or independent) affect labour-force engagement, the skill level of the job people hold, and the specific occupations and industries they work in?
The answers are striking.
Who's in work, and at what level?
Catholic school graduates had the highest employment rates — 87% for women, 85% for men. Government school graduates were lowest at 79%, with nearly double the unemployment rate of former independent-school students.
The skill-level gap is even sharper. Only 18% of males from government secondary schools held a bachelor-degree-level occupation (Skill Level 1) in 2021, compared to 33% of males from independent schools. For women, the gap runs from 25% to 41%. Under the Universities Accord, the government has set a target that 45% of each cohort hold a bachelor's degree or higher by 2050. Females from independent schools have already exceeded this in every state and territory. Males from government schools sit at 24% nationally — roughly half the target.
Selective-entry schools reduce the skew
One finding stands out for policy: in NSW, where the government runs 47 selective-entry secondary schools, the over-representation of independent-school graduates in medical occupations is substantially lower than in Victoria, which has only four such schools. The government sector's performance in NSW is close to double Victoria's. This suggests the skew is not inevitable — the structure of the public system can reshape it.
Industry signatures
The research also reveals distinct employment "signatures" by school sector. Male government-school graduates are strongly over-represented in construction trades — 2.6× the average rate for plasterers, 2.4× for bricklayers, 2.1× for carpenters. Catholic-school women are heavily concentrated in caring professions — 2.9× for midwives, 2.5× for primary school teachers, 2.4× for psychologists. Independent-school graduates cluster in medicine, law, finance, and media — women from independent schools were 3.1× more likely to become GPs and 3.5× more likely to become legal professionals than the population average.
Meanwhile, government-school graduates spread more evenly across all industries — making them, in a sense, the most "general-purpose" workforce.
What's next
This research establishes correlations, not causes. It doesn't tell us why these patterns exist — whether from school culture, family background, peer effects, or selection bias. But the scale of the differences makes them impossible to ignore, especially as automation and AI reshape the economy and as governments commit billions to education with outcome measures that have, until now, stopped at NAPLAN and ATAR.
Longitudinal Census data gives us a new kind of evidence. Combined with generative AI — which can now mine decades of school administrative records — we can move from documenting gaps to understanding what produces them, and designing interventions that actually close them.
The research report "School choice and careers" by David McCloskey was published by the Australian Population Research Institute (TAPRI) in September 2025.